Simple Duplicate Finder FAQ
Duplicate files wastes your hard drive space, takes longer time and larger size while backup your drive, and it is very annoying when searching for a certain file when having such duplicate files.
Simple Duplicate Finder will find and remove duplicate files from your computer or network drives. It is intended to be used on user content – documents, photos, images, music,and all other file types.
“Protected folders list” is a list of folders (and sub-folders ) to be excluded from any scan action, this list overrides any other settings.
It initially contains the system folders, program files, application data, etc., but you can add your own folders to protect from being scanned at all.
Generally it is not a good idea to scan the entire drive specially if it contains a lot of files and contains folders you don’t know what it is for. But you still can scan the entire drive.
It’s more useful to scan your own data – Documents, Photos, Music, Movies, etc. This way you can make an informed decision when deciding what to delete!
This depends on the speed of your hard drives/network drives and your H/W specs. The scan speed depends also on your selection for the scan method ( File size , File Name ,File Content …), if you select to check “File Content” and there is a lot of files the software will have to check each one down to the byte level – this will take time.
With the help of viewing the duplicates as “Files List” , “Folders list” and “File Types” list you will be easily able to decide which files, folders or types to keep and which to remove. But if you think you might need it then keep it! Or you can Move it to a backup location for later check. As a general rule you should only delete a file if you know what it is.
Try running Simple Duplicate Finder as administrator. In Vista or Windows 7/8 you can right click on the Simple Duplicate Finder icon and select “Run as Administrator”.
The program can compare files using File Size, Name, Content or extension or any combination of the previous. The fastest way to compare files is by not using the “File Content” option ( but it is not the most accurate ). Using the “File Content” option will force the software to read the file content and calculate the file hash. A Hash is like a fingerprint for a file. Simple Duplicate Finder use these “fingerprints” to identify duplicate files.